About this Event
Oral History Summer School presents with (Creative Legion) and OutHudson:
Occupy the Void with Generosity : A Participatory Lecture with Ted Kerr, Koray Duman and Carlos Motta
Memorials serve as sites of invitation. To remember. To rest. To witness. To gather. To organize.
The Void, an ongoing counter-memorial to HIV / AIDS, prioritizes gathering in public space as a radical invitation to honor our dead - together, out loud - to feel, discuss and take action around the ongoing AIDS crisis and interconnected issues.
For this participatory lecture, the history and various uses of The Void will be shared, before it is activated in the space as an opportunity to bring voice to connecting issues, realities and tactics emerging from the HIV response alongside other contemporary calamities.
The Void began as a proposal in 2020 for the Highline Plinth commission by Carlos Motta, Koray Duman and Theodore Kerr. The proposal was not selected. A year later, it was considered as a temporary public sculpture connected to the New York City AIDS Memorials. This opportunity also did not move forward. Since then, The Void has found a public life through publication,exhibition, and events featured in The Hoosac Institute, and Motta’s exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art in Bogota and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Barcelona, where it served a platform to convene, discuss, perform, etc
Over the years, The Void has come to be an ephemeral memorial, serving at various times as a proposal, a wall painting, a performance backdrop, a site of radical hospitality, a counter monument, a place for institutional criticism and more. Core to the project is a faith and practice of politics and generosity in public space.
Oral History Summer School is grateful for additional support from New York State Council for the Arts, Loring McAlpin, Laura Hoffman, Juno Shaye, Maxine Snider, Tara Bray Smith and Diana Lempel. To donate to Oral History Summer School: https://www.oralhistorysummerschool.com/support/donate
Bios:
Koray Duman, AIA, LEED AP, invests in the social, cultural and ecological challenges of our built environment with innovative architectural strategies. An immigrant, Muslim, and LGBTQ man, Koray expresses in his work the need for architecture to encourage human bonds as a form of cultural advancement, creating spaces that promote inclusion, connectivity, and engagement with everyone.Prior to establishing Buro Koray Duman in 2013, Koray was the co-founder of Sayigh Duman Architects and had previously worked as the lead architect on several West Coast museum projects for Frederick Fisher & Partners. Koray has been the chair of New Practice Committee at AIA NY, a board member of the Clemente Center, and part of the Leadership Council at Van Alen Institute. He is currently a fellow of Urban Design Forum, and sits on the advisory boards of the American Society for Muslim Advancement and ProtoCinema. Koray has taught at Pratt Graduate School of Architecture, the New School, and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He is originally from Turkey where he earned a BArch from Middle Eastern Technical University, and furthered his studies at UCLA Graduate School of Architecture and Urban Design with a master’s degree in Architecture. Koray is a registered architect in New York and Turkey.
Theodore (Ted) Kerr is a writer, educator, cultural organizer and artist whose work explores the history and ongoing impact of HIV/AIDS through the lenses of art, activism, and community storytelling. He is the co-author of We Are Having This Conversation Now: The Times of AIDS Cultural Production (Duke University Press, 2022, with Alexandra Juhasz). He curated the 2021 exhibition AIDS, Posters and Stories of Public Health: A People's Pandemic for the National Libraries of Medicine. He is a founding member of the international collective What Would an HIV Doula Do? He was one of 4 oral historians who worked on Visual Arts and the AIDS Epidemic: An Oral History Project for the Smithsonian, Archives for American Art in 2017 / 2018. He teaches at The New School, and is currently a Visiting Professor at Manhattan University.
Carlos Motta (b. 1978, Colombia) is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice documents the social conditions and political struggles of sexual, gender, and ethnic minority communities, challenging normative discourses through acts of self-representation. As a historian of untold narratives, Motta is deeply committed to researching the struggles of post-colonial subjects and societies. His work spans a variety of media, including video, installation, sculpture, drawing, web-based projects, performance, and symposia. In 2026, Motta’s mid-career survey, Carlos Motta: Pleas of Resistance—originally shown in 2025 at the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) and co-curated by Agustín Pérez Rubio and María Berrios—will travel to OK Contemporary Art Center in Linz, curated by Agustín Pérez-Rubio and Susanne Watzenboeck. In 2026, Motta was also named Keith Haring Chair in Art and Activism at Bard College.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
(Creative Legion), 7 Fairview Avenue, Hudson, United States
USD 0.00
